Trusted Messengers May Help Disenfranchised Communities Overcome Vaccine Hesitancy
MINNEAPOLIS — Gloria Torres-Herbeck gets the flu vaccine every year, but the 53-year-old teacher in Rochester, Minnesota, isn’t yet convinced she wants to be first in line for a potential COVID-19 vaccine. “I’m not super old, but I’m not as strong as other people,” she said. “So, I need to be realistic on my own […]
KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: All I Want for Christmas Is a COVID Relief Bill
Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen on PRX. Congress appears to be inching ever closer to agreement on a long-delayed COVID-19 relief bill, which would extend unemployment insurance and other emergency programs set to expire in the next several days. That bill, however, apparently will not include the top-priority items for both political […]
Alzheimer’s Inc.: Colleagues Question Scientist’s Pricey Recipe Against Memory Loss
When her husband was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease in 2015, Elizabeth Pan was devastated by the lack of options to slow his inevitable decline. But she was encouraged when she discovered the work of a UCLA neurologist, Dr. Dale Bredesen, who offered a comprehensive lifestyle management program to halt or even reverse cognitive decline […]
With Vaccine Delivery Imminent, Nursing Homes Must Make a Strong Pitch to Residents
Imagine this: Your elderly mother, who has dementia, is in a nursing home and COVID-19 vaccines are due to arrive in a week or two. You think she should be vaccinated, having heard the vaccine is effective in generating an immune response in older adults. Your brother disagrees. He worries that development of the vaccine […]
Lie of the Year: The Downplay and Denial of the Coronavirus
A Florida taxi driver and his wife had seen enough conspiracy theories online to believe the virus was overblown, maybe even a hoax. So no masks for them. Then they got sick. She died. A college lecturer had trouble refilling her lupus drug after the president promoted it as a treatment for the new disease. […]
‘An Arm and a Leg’: Shopping for Health Insurance? Here’s How One Family Tried to Pick a Plan
Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen. When host Dan Weissmann and his wife set out to pick a health insurance plan for next year, they realized that keeping the plan they have means paying $200 a month more. But would a “cheaper” plan cost them more in the long run? It depends. And […]
Pandemic Backlash Jeopardizes Public Health Powers, Leaders
[Update: This article was revised at 1:15 p.m. ET on Dec. 15, 2020, to reflect the resignation of Dr. Gianfranco Pezzino, the health officer in Shawnee County, Kansas.] Tisha Coleman has lived in close-knit Linn County, Kansas, for 42 years and never felt so alone. As the public health administrator, she’s struggled every day of […]
High-Poverty Neighborhoods Bear the Brunt of COVID’s Scourge
window.addEventListener(‘message’, function(event) { if (typeof event.data[‘datawrapper-height’] !== ‘undefined’) { var iframes = document.querySelectorAll(‘iframe’); for (var chartId in event.data[‘datawrapper-height’]) { for (var i=0; i<iframes.length; i++) { if (iframes[i].contentWindow === event.source) { iframes[i].style.height = event.data['datawrapper-height'][chartId] + 'px'; } } } } }); Over the course of the pandemic, COVID-19 infections have battered high-poverty neighborhoods in California on […]
Pediatricians Want Kids to Be Part of COVID Vaccine Trials
If clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines aren’t expanded soon to include children, it’s unlikely that even kids in their teens will be vaccinated in time for the next school year. The hurdle is that COVID vaccine makers are only in the early stages of testing their products on children. The Pfizer vaccine authorized for use […]
Trump’s Wrong. 15% ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Not on Par With Strength of a Vaccine
The percentage of Americans with natural immunity from getting COVID-19 is “a very powerful vaccine in itself.” — President Donald Trump on Dec. 8 at a White House Operation Warp Speed vaccine summit During a Dec. 8 press conference about Operation Warp Speed, President Donald Trump likened the spread of the coronavirus throughout the population […]